


When Carl Met Liam

by awolfnamed_Nyx



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Chance Meetings, Enemies to Friends, Near Death Experiences, This idea has been in my head for a bit, could be read as slash, if you couldn't tell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 10:15:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14494746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awolfnamed_Nyx/pseuds/awolfnamed_Nyx
Summary: That’s when Carl saw it. It was small and brown, a wooden shack with a few windows nestled deep within foliage and large trees. It wasn’t locked, which didn’t surprise him. Not much was locked these days. The dust on the floor, however, had been disturbed but there was no sign of a walker being trapped inside, which did surprise him. He was confused until he saw the stack of blankets in the corner, thick enough to ward off the cold that settled over the area at night. Some cans were piled in the corner beside the makeshift bedroll resting on the wall. A barely-tattered jacket was hung over the back of one of the wooden chairs. None of that had dust on it.He backed out of the small shack quickly, already holstering his gun and telling Enid, “Someone lives here, we should—"“Go? I was thinkin’ the same thing.”





	When Carl Met Liam

After things had settled down somewhat in Alexandria, Carl and Enid started leaving the camp again.

His wound had healed up beautifully, according to Denise, and being cooped up with everyone coddling him was grating on Carl’s last nerve. So he’d packed some comic books, a couple bottles of water and a bag of chips before asking Enid if she wanted to join him. They never spoke while they were out, just sat side by side engrossed in whatever project or book they had brought and basking in the sounds of nature around them. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Almost.

The occasional walker passed by or ambled up to them. Carl was glad; he needed to get practice in with his injury. The first couple attempts were difficult and required Enid’s help, but he’d gotten the hang of it pretty quickly. The two of them stepped out every few days, slipping right under the guard’s nose as whoever it was took watch. No one knew they did this; Enid refused to talk to most of the group—despite Glenn and Maggie’s best efforts—and Carl refused to worry his dad or Michonne. He didn’t want an interrogation or a pep talk or someone to act as a therapist and ask ‘How does it make you feel’ now that his eye was gone. He wanted quiet— a silent presence that would also function as an extra set of eyes, though he never ventured too far from the walls. Enid had been his best bet. She’d proven herself, too; the girl only spoke when asking which direction they were heading or how long they’d be out there. She always asked the same questions and he always gave the same answer: “I don’t know”.

They came across Spencer often these days, hiding behind trees as he passed with a shovel strapped to his back. He never saw them and Carl and Enid never approached him to talk. Carl knew the importance of privacy in this ugly, new world.

Today, they crawled over the ledge and scaled down the wall. Enid hitched her backpack higher on her back and turned to Carl. “Which direction?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered.

She turned and started walking. Carl always let her choose, anyway. When they couldn’t see the top of the walls through the trees, she asked, “How long are we staying out today?”

“I’m not sure,” he answered. She shrugged and kept walking, knowing Carl could always tell when she’d had enough adventure for the day.

They walked a little longer than usual. Instead of stopping near one of their regular spots, Enid kept walking. Carl was right behind her. Only two walkers stumbled out of the trees and they were taken care of, but Carl knew they shouldn’t keep going and risk walking into a groups of undead. Enid understood without him saying anything; she slowed her pace and started looking around for a good place to sit.

That’s when Carl saw it. It was small and brown, a wooden shack with a few windows nestled deep within foliage and large trees. He tapped Enid’s shoulder and led the way, knife at the ready. The windows were grimy; he couldn’t see anything as he peered through the dirty glass.

“Keep watch,” he told Enid. She turned her back immediately and raised her gun. Carl did the same with his attention focused on the little cottage’s door.

It wasn’t locked, which didn’t surprise him. Not much was locked these days. The dust on the floor, however, had been disturbed but there was no sign of a walker being trapped inside, which did surprise him. And the walls were made of some pretty sturdy wood, not the flimsy cuts of lumber you usually saw. He was confused until he saw the stack of blankets in the corner, thick enough to ward off the cold that settled over the area at night. Some cans were piled in the corner beside the makeshift bedroll resting on the wall. A barely-tattered jacket was hung over the back of one of the wooden chairs. None of _that_ had dust on it.

Carl backed out of the small shack quickly, already holstering his gun and telling Enid, “Someone lives here, we should—”

“Go? I was thinkin’ the same thing.” 

The new voice—deep, muffled, male—froze Carl in his tracks. He turned slowly with his arms raised high in surrender. Enid hadn’t warned him so he could only assume she’d been grabbed.

Aaaaand he was right; Enid was facing him with a gun pressed beneath her chin. Her face was stuck in an eerie kind of calm but Carl could see her hands shaking. In fear or anger, he honestly couldn’t tell.

The guy behind her seemed calm and collected from what Carl could tell, which wasn’t much considering the bandana covering the lower half of his face. His eyes, though; they weren’t swimming with madness or rage like Carl had seen back in Terminus. Or in the prison. Or the night his father had ripped out a man’s throat with his teeth. These eyes were dark, dark brown, sparkling sharp instead of deranged.

A sane man, Carl thought, was something he could work with. “We were just looking,” he stated, arms still in the air. “Didn’t take anything and don’t plan to. So if you let us go, we won’t come back.”

The man chuckled, low and raspy, behind his bandana-mask. The gun didn’t budge. “Do I look that stupid to you?”

“Don’t know,” Carl shrugged. “Can’t see your face.” He nearly winced; that… had not been what he’d meant to say.

It earned nothing more than an amused snort and an eye roll, though. “You’re not supposed to. That’s the point, kid.”

Enid’s hands clenched into fists.

“Look, no one’s here to fight. We aren’t trying to stop you from getting to your… shack or whatever. We don’t need your stuff, so you don’t need to threaten her like that.” Carl watched calmly as the man’s eyes narrowed, watched as his arm relaxed slightly, watched as the gun’s barrel shifted down an inch or two. Not far, but enough.

“You’re clean and you look well-fed,” the man commented and his tone went a bit deeper, thicker almost. “Where is your—”

His breath rushed out in one big ‘whoosh’ as Enid rammed her elbow in his gut, just as Carl had taught her. She snatched the weapon from his lax hand and made a bee-line for Carl, raising the stolen gun as Carl did the same with his own. Those brown, brown eyes glared up at him.

Carl swallowed shallowly and said, “Here’s how this is gonna go. You’re going to step into the shack and close the door. We’ll leave the gun out here on the ground.” He stepped closer and hoped his glower still worked with only one eye. “If that door so much as squeaks before we get past those trees”— he pointed in a random direction south of their camp, thinking they could just get far enough away before getting back on track— “I’ll put a bullet in it. We clear?”

The man’s lip quirked in an annoyed pout, but he said, “Crystal, governor.”

“Don’t call me that.” It brought up old hurts—images of the prison, all the people they lost, Hershel, his mom. Too much. To hide the tick of his jaw as his teeth clenched, Carl gestured to the shack with his gun and slipped back to give him room. Enid followed his lead, stepping back so the man had to walk between the two guns. He did so very, very slowly—those brown eyes gave Carl a very deliberate look up and down. He lifted the gun in response until the barrel pointed to the man’s forehead, right in between the eyes. “Move,” he growled, and the man did.

Right before Bandana Man’s foot crossed the threshold, two things happened at once: two walkers groaned as they came around the shack, and Bandana called over his shoulder, “Sure you know how to use that, kid?”

Carl had fired two shots, one into each of the walkers’ skulls, before he knew it, barely even looking away from the man. He’s not sure how much of that had been luck and how much was due to all that target practice he’d done since his accident. Either way, he’d take it. He repositioned the gun and said, “I’m pretty sure. Into the shack, let’s go.”

There was no response this time, other than his mouth clicking shut, as the man stepped into the wooden room and turned to face them.

Keeping his eye and weapon trained on their target, Carl tilted his head toward Enid. “Got your gun?” It had probably fallen or been thrown away when Bandana’d grabbed her; he hadn’t seen it.

She moved closer. “Yeah. Here.” Bandana’s gun tapped against his side, so he took it and gestured toward the door.

“Close it,” he said. And that’s when the herd of walkers fell through the trees.

 

 

 

 

The reaction was immediate. Enid backed away quickly with her gun drawn. Carl aimed both weapons at the nearest walking corpses and fired. Bandana Man slammed the shack’s door shut.

There was no choice for them but to fight. If they wanted to live, Carl thought wildly as he whipped from side to side shooting and dodging and shooting and kicking, they had to fight like hell.

Carl tried, he _did_ , but even with the two of them and three weapons, it was impossible. They had rounded the shed to put more distance between them but he could see Enid shaking, panic making her aim wild and her shots wide. He saw the sheer number of the snarling monsters reaching for them; it was growing by the second. What he had initially thought was just a small group was turning into a little horde, which was much more than they were equipped to handle at the moment. Hell, it could possibly reach the size of the attack in Alexandria the night of his accident, if it grows any more. And just like that, he remembered how far from home they were. There was no way they were going to get away to ask for help, not without losing one of them.

The thought bounced around in his head. Painfully at first, but then he steeled himself as he shot another three walkers in the head with as much precision as can be expected from a kid with one eye.

He thought about it some more, and then he made the decision for them both.

“Enid, go!” He yelled over the gunfire and deadly growls, but she stayed rooted in her spot. So he disengaged from fighting a walker and shoved her in the direction of the camp. “ _Go_! I’ll cover you!”

It stung a bit, that she ran off instantly. But he couldn’t complain; he might’ve done the same in her position. He didn’t have to shoot too many for her to slip through and sprint to the trees, and after the trail of her long hair disappeared, she was gone.

He was alone, stuck in a rancid sea of monsters.

One of the guns ran out of bullets not long after— it was Bandana’s, he noticed off-handedly. So Carl shoved it into his holster and tried to make do with just one weapon. One weapon, one eye. It couldn’t be must worse than this, he thought.

But, oh, did it get worse. The increasing number of walkers didn’t seem to stop; every time he took one down, another bumbled into its place. He had been steadily moving away from them as he shot, but now he’s come full circle, standing near the shack’s front door once more. That thin, thin bit of distance between him and them was being eaten up just as he would be in a handful of moments. His gun was going to run out of bullets soon, and he couldn’t afford to let them get close enough for him to use his knife. Definitely wouldn’t work with this many swarming around him.

As soon as the bleak prediction entered his head, the gun clicked in his hand. There were a few magazine clips in the pouch on his belt, but he had neither the time nor the room to pull one out before a walker was on him. The close stench made him gag as he bashed its head in with the gun handle. Another one latched onto his arm with a vice grip; he swung it into the shack’s wall and stabbed it through the eye. Another was at his shoulder while he pulled the knife free. And another one grabbed for his chest. And another one brushed against his hat, it was so tall and close behind him.

Pretty soon, he was the one pressed against the wall, kicking and shoving and just _keeping them away_. His breathing was going ragged and sounded panicked to his own ears. His hands, as they tried to keep the monsters at arm’s length, were trembling. He couldn’t see anything but rotting flesh and colorless eyes and wide, gaping mouths hoping to devour him.

Is this what it felt like, Carl wondered in a strange moment of clarity, to know you’re going to die? Is this what all those people were thinking when they’d been bitten into? Is this how they felt—calm and panicked all at the same time? Is this what they saw? Smelled? Touched? Carl didn’t know. He didn’t want to find out, but it looked like—

The shack’s door slammed into the walkers right in front of it, not just sending them off-course but shoving them completely to the ground. A knife sank into the skull of the walker huffing near Carl’s neck, then went through the eye of the one trying to take a chunk out of his shoulder. There was a voice and a hand tugging on him, pulling him roughly through the door and yelling obscenities at him. But Carl’s ears were full of some white noise; his body was lax with relief though the danger had yet to pass.

Then he was shocked back to reality when those brown, brown eyes, panicked and wide and angry, bore into his. Bandana’s fingers dug into his shoulders, and he kept screaming until Carl could hear him.

“—down the door! Help me block it!”

His body moved, despite his head still being too fuzzy to tell it to do anything, and the two of them slid the decrepit, wooden bed frame across the grooved floor. It was heavy; Carl had to throw all of his meager little weight against the thing to make it budge an inch. Bandana had a bit more bulk to him so, between the two of them, the frame scraped across the room with a minimal amount of sweat and cursing. It settled heavily against the rattling wood. The two windows shook with the force of the undead hands clawing at it, but they held, much to Carl’s relief. The wooden walls proved to be as thick as he’d thought earlier.

There was more moaning than he cared for and he had no idea if Enid had made it or not and he would be stuck in a tiny shack/ cottage for the foreseeable future, but Carl was alive. He was alive and in one piece (mostly) and too damn happy about it to worry about being stuck with the man he’d just held at gun point who had done a complete one-eighty and saved his sorry ass. Speaking of which….

He turned to the panting man on his left and waited until he drew the man’s gaze. Until he had enough breath to wheeze out a raspy, but heartfelt: “ _Thank you_.” Didn’t get more than a nod in response, but that was to be expected. Neither of them had really caught their breath. It was enough, though.

They slid to the floor simultaneously. His knee was pressed against Bandana’s thigh; he was too focused on his shaking hands to move it, and Bandana either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care. Carl was fine either way. Just sitting down and being alive was enough for him right now, anyway.

Well, the silence between them wasn’t. The banging and groaning bothered him like it never had before. He needed to talk, distract himself. “What do we do now?” He still didn’t have a lot of breath but it seemed Bandana understood anyway.

The man sighed and glanced around the shack with his knife clutched in his hand. “Wait for them to lose interest or for somethin’ else to come along.”

Carl wanted to snort. He caught the guy’s eye and raised a brow. “You mean someone, don’t you.”

It wasn’t a question; Carl knew he was right and had no problem sacrificing some other idiot wandering into the woods if it meant they could escape. Yeah, he said “they”. The guy had saved his life. At the very least he deserved to get out of this alive. So Carl needed no answer, but Bandana snatched his face covering down to his neck and Carl was thrown by the size of his dimples. “’course, kid.”

The laugh bubbled out of Carl so suddenly that it surprised him. Low so it wouldn’t exacerbate the walkers even more, but it was full of mirth and so deep it made his shoulders bounce. He laughed and laughed and tried to stop it, but it kept on going. Then it shifted into a chuckle and then back again, shaking him so hard that tears were starting to blur his vision. He could still see Bandana’s confused frown twitching into an uncontrolled smile, though.

“What’s so funny?”

Carl was going to blurt out “Nothing!” but that would be a lie. Instead, he leaned forward and said, “ _Everything_. I almost got eaten alive then got saved by some asshole that pulled a fucking gun on me, like, five minutes ago. And now we’re stuck in a tiny fucking shack with a thousand walkers trying to eat us!” Every word was punctuated by a breathy laugh, and now Carl was ready to acknowledge that he was going insane. Given the world he lives in, it probably should have happened a long time ago.

Though Carl expected him to, Bandana didn’t back away from him. He simply arched one brow and threw Carl (again) with those distracting dimples. “One, there’s no way there are a thousand undead outside that door.” He let out a small chuckle that made Carl feel less crazy. “And two, this _asshole_ has a name.”

“Oh, yeah?” Carl grinned and tapped his hat, which had stayed on his head by some miracle, away from his forehead. He watched Bandana’s eyes flit over his face. “What is it?”

Bandana offered his hand. Carl thought that, under all that dirt and dried blood, he had to be a nice shade of brown. “Liam,” the man said.

Carl took his hand and gave it a firm shake. “Carl. Not ‘kid’. You can’t be much older than me.”

Banda— Liam smiled crookedly and squeezed his hand before releasing it. He didn’t refute anything. “Well, _Carl_.” His stupid country imitation made Carl snort. “Welcome to my humble shack-abode.”

“Thanks, _kid_ ,” he said and that set the two of them off again, snickering into their hands like children. Clinically insane children, too. But Carl didn’t want to stop; this was the most he’d laughed, talked, _felt_ in a long time, regardless of how stupid he must look and how close he came to dying. How close he still was— the snarling and banging had yet to die down and their laughing probably wasn’t helping. His knee was pressing even more firmly into the ma—Liam’s thigh with each laugh, and Liam’s fist knocked his arm gently as he wheezed “Shut the fuck up, man!” and, hell, Carl was fucking _alive_! Sitting here on the floor with another human being, no matter how strange the circumstance, was enough. It was more than enough, he reckoned.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't posted anything on ao3 in a looooooong time, but I've been staring at this ficlet on my computer for far too long so I figured, hell, why not? Whelp, here it is, I guess. This is set during the Alexandria arc, so you can tell how long I've been sitting on this.....
> 
> I've always imagined Carl to have a more distinct country accent like his dad, so that's what he has in this fic. And, yes, I know Carl's gone in the show. Let me be happy and pretend please. :)
> 
> Oh, and I'm not sure if this is necessarily a "graphic depiction of violence" but I tagged it just to be safe.
> 
> Let me know what you think!


End file.
